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26 Apr 2007
The weight of expectation hasn’t affected the Arctic Monkeys one iota. They’ve hardly broken their stride and have tossed off a second album of casual brilliance. It almost feels unfair how off the cuff Favourite Worst Nightmare feels; the lyrics are as…
27 Feb 2007
FOLK (Greentrax) The Irish band’s second release on Greentrax offers a characteristic mix of lively, infectious tunes and wistful songs, the latter courtesy of another new young singer and fiddle player off the Irish production line, Claire-Anne…
7 May 2007
COUNTRY ROCK With two ex-punks, one indie-boy and a drummer who plays in jazz bands at a tennis club, it was an obvious career move to form an alt.country band together. Not only that, but a really quite good one - the Glaswegian God-Fearing Atheists…
13 Mar 2007
ROCK POP After two songs of the Aliens’ debut long player (an outdated description, but at 72 minutes, a justified one), you might be praying for invasion by some little green ones to take you away from it all. The hackneyed and tuneless 60s funk…
16 Jul 2007
ROCK DEAN OWENS Whisky Hearts (Vermillion Road Records) Dean Owens is a genuine one-off. His exploration of songwriting has taken him through the heart of Americana, where he has found many opportunities to show his skills as a songwriter…
GRIME LETHAL BIZZLE Back to Bizznizz (V2) The ailing Grime scene too often forgets that it was spawned from dance music, not hip hop, with many MCs eschewing potential club hits in favour of brainless trigger talk. Lethal Bizzle, on the…
18 Jun 2007
INDIE FOLK As a collaborator with everyone from Arab Strap to Idlewild and Malcolm Middleton, Jenny Reeve’s myriad musical talents have graced many a record to fine effect over the last few years. Now at last stepping into the limelight herself with…
HIP HOP REVISITED Love or loathe them, it looks like the blend trend that combusted spontaneously in both indie and hip hop scenes two or three years ago is set to burn on unabated. Here, Edinburgh’s own Nasty P casts in his own tuppence worth. The…
FOLK/ROCK Music from beyond the grave is always kind of spooky, especially when it is from an artist whose demise life was cut short like Smith’s. This is even more so given the bare nature of his songs, often little more than a couple of guitar…
27 Mar 2007
ROCK Four years in the making and EIGHT years since their last album, the Edinburgh veterans have eventually got their act together long enough to complete this, their third long-player. And, thankfully, it’s well worth the wait. An irresistible…
INDIE Lanarkshire, so much to answer for - so it’s only right that one-time Mogwai and Teenage Fanclub man Brendan O’Hare is on hand to polish the, shall we say, raw materials presented to him by the Motherwell quartet, who keep the ‘shambling…
INDIE Like the newest member of an inbred family, Unkle Bob’s debut album has numerous musical baby daddies. Like Snow Patrol they formed in Scotland; like Keane they are prone to stirring emotional anthems and singer Rick Webster’s voice performs…
ROCK (Mute) Grinderman sounds like Nick Cave and three of his fellow Bad Seeds locked themselves in a dank basement for a week and beat into shape 11 songs in a series of dirty blues jam sessions. Actually, that’s pretty much what happened when…
FUNK-ROCK (www.sub-opt.com) With an overt sense of fun and adventure these ascending Edinburgers possess all the attitude and contrary sweetness of the likes of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers and come out sounding not unlike Californicators. Musically…
29 Jan 2007
CHEERY SCOTTISH ECLECTICA If this is the future of Scottish music, then it has a big broad smile on its face. Often it may be a broken one (such as in Jock Scot’s barroom brogue of ‘Barcelona’), sometimes it’s the scary kind with the thousand yard…
KIDS COMPILATION Nostalgia might not be what it once was, but in the Staples and Boulter households, the past is far from imperfect. Stuart and Dave, the guys from the Tindersticks, have lovingly recreated the songs they remembered from their radios…
SINGLES & DOWNLOADS (Image: The Heavy) I declare it the Summer of Dross! Kicking off the half-arsed festival-promoting releases is Mika ’s ‘Big Girl’ (Casablanca, 1 STAR), which flaps along like Scissor Sisters devoid of the camp charm and…
EUPHORIC INDIE MIRACLE FORTRESS Five Roses (Rough Trade) Miracle Fortress is really just one man, the sickeningly talented 23-year-old Graham Van Pelt. Actually, ‘miracle fortress’ is a good way of describing what debut album Five Roses…
Electronica CHUNGKING Stay up Forever (Ecstatic Peace, Kill Rock Stars, -5RC, Three Lobed) Sean and Jessie have produced a slick, chic, dirty and danceable reason to stay up all night. It makes you think of Goldfrapp but with that…
JAZZ BOBBY HUTCHERSON For Sentimental Reasons (Kind of Blue) Vibes maestro Bobby Hutcherson was one of the key innovators in the post-bop experiments of the mid-60s for the Blue Note label, but he focuses on a more conventionally…
SINGER-SONGWRITER RANDAN DISCOTHEQUE I Am the Singer, You Are the Song (Fife Kills) Snaking from Johnny Cash train stomp rhythms to delicate love stung paeans to departed muses, Randan Discotheque throws up an occasionally disconcerting…
ROCK The White stripes are keen proof that there is a god. Or at least a benevolent force in the universe that occasionally, just occasionally allows a little bit of magic into this cruel, cruel world. Who else would have permitted this pair of…
JAZZ Alto saxophonist Paul Towndrow and his new Sextet recorded this album in adverse circumstances, but there is nothing here that would give away the fact that it was made under unusual time constraints. Towndrow’s brand of inventive contemporary…
ELECTRONIC Music has previously always struggled to keep pace with Paul Haig. His 80s angular Edinburgh post-punk outfit Josef K were way ahead of their time, influencing numerous contemporary bands (most notably Franz Ferdinand). His last few solo…
ELECTRO Have you forgotten how exciting electronic music can be? Well you’re about to be reminded as two albums released this year are set to totally revitalise the genre. One comes in the form of † by Justice, the other is this impressive offering…
INDIE POP Problem page pop from a bunch of self-confessed puny losers from Motherwell? It shouldn’t work - hearing them sniff and sigh through bleak, downbeat stories about getting chucked in Strathclyde Park, or feeling they’ve missed their prime…
ELECTRONICA When a creative force is raised in a boring little armpit such as Kiel, it’s perhaps inevitable that the only reaction is to try and make something gorgeous from the tedium. With his third album, both the banal and the beautiful are…
JAZZ Pianist Kenny Werner forsakes the comfort and familiarity of his customary trio setting for a more ambitious conceptual approach to his music on this recording, his first for Blue Note. A row of lawn chairs upturned by the wind near his home…
POP Skye boys Leighton Jones (keyboard and vocals) and Hector MacInnes (drums) and the four other Injuns lads know their stuff and aren’t afraid to prove it. This debut is a densely influenced, multi-genre-encapsulating smorgasbord swerving from the…
9 Apr 2007
FOLK Fiddler Lauren MacColl first came to wider notice when she won the BBC2 Young Folk Award in 2004. She is highly accomplished technically, but also has a genuine feel for the expressive nuances of the music, a quality entirely evident in this…
MIX A big, fat, 29-track mix album by Spank Rock, last year’s boys most likely to. Featuring tracks by Miss Kittin, Hot Chip, Daft Punk and this year’s girls most likely to, CSS. It screams hip electro party album brilliance from the tracklisting…
ROCK There are certain bands that make sense only on record, and there are certain bands that only make sense live. Modest Mouse are a truly odd beast in that they have never completely fit either live or on record. They have, however, on occasion…
GLITCHY FOLK There’s a joyous impatience in the music Thee Moths make. Whether it’s on clipped, sweet acoustic jingles or powdery, brittle electronic cut ups or general strung out oddness is infectious. The songs swim into one another and the overall…
ELECTRO ROCK There’s a feeling that you’re missing out on the joke with bands like Trans Am. What with the faux boy band press shots and the musical appropriation of everything from Rush to Harold Faltemeyer, it all seems a bit too clever-clever for…
INDIE This has been a long time coming. The List has sat quietly, collecting up demos and singles in a tidy pile until this unassuming quartet finally got a long player out. Thankfully this is worth the wait: a dozen brittle tunes that alternately…
ELECTRO POP With a background in futuristic theatre productions and distant cinematic electronica, Pomegranate (duo Stef McGlinchey and Vanessa Rigg) certainly know how to put a layered, nocturnal soundscape or two together (not for nowt is the…
AMBIENT ELECTRONICA It really is a terrible shame to always be likening fresh Scottish electronica to the all-conquering Soma stable, but Rubens possess that same jittery, emotive quality in spades. Christ knows how the title relates to the contents…
INDIE Well, here’s a band with an identity crisis. On the one hand, Glasgow quartet The Cinematics clearly have a knack for crafting catchy wee pop gems, the unashamed Britpop forays that are ‘Sunday Sun’ and ‘Chase’ being stacked to the gills with…
POP (Virgin) It is easy to forget that Air started off as a truly saucy electropop band; ‘Sexy Boy’ and ‘Kelly Watch the Stars’ making hearts flutter and feet twitch in a beautiful geek love kind of way. After spending several albums trying really…
ELECTRONICA (Ninja Tune) Everything’s going organic these days, from shoes to hats to yoghurt, so it is truly apposite that someone should compose a soundtrack which might reflect such a movement without having to resort to some kind of ugly, if…
JAZZ (TenToTen) Back in the 50s and 60s, jazz label bosses often unveiled a new talent to the public via an album under the ‘Introducing’ title. Clark Tracey has re-established the practice with this debut album from a young English pianist, and…
METAL (Relapse) 2006 wasn’t the most exciting for metal. So it’s a relief that The End have come out of nowhere (well, Canada) to restore the faith and push the genre into new forms. Gone are the tonsil-tearing screams and mathcore chaos of…
REGGAE (Trojan) Needless to say this is one loose and laid back journey across the Jamaican rhythm section’s catalytic influence, from crafting winners for the Channel One label through the rise of the rockers and rub-a-dub sounds. This chapter…
ROCK (Virgin) Come on! What did you expect? How could the first album in 35 years from the band who inspired everything from The Ramones to Mogwai and Guns ‘n Roses not be anything other than an anti-climax? A good album is a good album though…
JAZZ (Art of Life) This would go down as an important release on historic grounds alone, but it also happens to be a classy slice of mid-60s British jazz. Although long known about, and available in part in bootleg versions, this is the first…
13 Feb 2007
JAZZ (Outer Bridge Records) Guitarist Preston Reed continues to elude precise genre classification in his his distinctive style of solo guitar music, but this ballad-oriented set is the closest he has come to a straight jazz outing. In his insert…
ROCK Impressive influences do not a great band make . . . Towers of London alone are proof of that. This lot could teach them a thing or two, however, as, although they clearly worship at the alters of Hole, Blondie, Joan Jett and Ramones, the…
INDIE Instantly labelled as a ‘troubadour’, seemingly this year’s music journalism cliché de rigeur, Jamie T and his bass guitar pop has enjoyed a year of steadily conscripting devotees to his cause. Striking a lyrical balance between mockney…
POP Let’s play Spot the Influence. Queen! The Communards! Frankie Goes To Hollywood! Just when you’ve got Mika pinned as a retro-glam Hi NRG soundalike, he whaps the horns out for a Blur-ry knockabout caper on ‘Billy Brown’. Which sounds a bit like…
JAZZ The National Youth Orchestra of Scotland’s associated Jazz Orchestra has been around now for a decade, and issued a CD featuring the music of pianist Nikki Yeoh seven years ago. This second disc features two suites by Scottish composers at…
FOLK Shooglenifty have been around long enough to defuse the element of surprise in their musical fusions, a process hastened by the pervasive genre-expanding influence they have exerted over the years. If it no longer packs the sheer novelty it once…
ROCK They may have released their first offering five years ago but Zombina and the Skeletones are still waiting to make their big splash. Without a doubt, Death Valley High should be it as not only does it contain their most infectious material to…
11 Dec 2006
INDIE With a manifesto aiming to ‘save pop’, Dogbox Records have certainly set themselves a tall task. Most of the ‘pop’ on this compilation is as likely to hit the charts as a duet from Robert Kilroy-Silk and Michael Barrymore, but this reflects far…
ALSO RELEASED Sam Baker - Pretty World (An Independent Release) Baker’s dense lyrics reflect life and near loss, and the artist is clearly determined to make sure every single moment counts. Vocals are country-nasal and a little limited, yet the…
RETRO POP THE THRILLS Teenager (Virgin) It must be lovely being The Thrills. They seem to exist in an alternate universe to the rest of us, a hazy, sun-dappled version of the past that never happened, as though in perpetual audition for…
INDIE/FOLK WOODEN WAND James and the Quiet (Institute) Toning down from the eccentricities of his previous work, James Jackson Toth endeavoured to follow his muse and create something altogether different. Yet a style comparable to…
FOLK MEGSON Smoke of Home (EDJ Records) Megson are the duo of Stu Hanna and Debbie Palmer. They hail originally from Teesside, and have been picking up a fair bit of favourable notice on the acoustic folk/roots circuit over the past couple…
JAZZ MIROSLAV VITOUS Universal Syncopations II (ECM Records) Miroslav Vitous’ Universal Syncopations marked his return to the ECM label, and was widely praised on its release in 2003. The bassist has chosen to extend and develop the…
AMERICANA RYAN ADAMS Easy Tiger (Lost Highway) After three albums in 2005 (two were doubles) and a batch of nonsense online ‘releases’, Americana’s poster boy has put his energies into one album. And it’s easily his most consistent work to…
FOLK MARTIN SIMPSON Prodigal Son (Topic) Simpson may be an enthusiast - he includes notes on his guitar tunings - but he is no purist. His enquiring ears have kept him at the interesting edge of the folk scene since he was a genuine…
ELECTRONICA For those wondering what Paul Hartnoll has been up to since Orbital split in 2004, he has been hard at it in his Brighton studio, figuring out how to produce something far removed from his past output: ‘It just took time to discover what…
ROCK Editors have grown up since debut, The Back Room. There’s new confidence to Smith’s vocals, and anthemic ‘Weight of the World’ has a gravity that ‘Open Your Arms’ never quite attains. The sound has the urgency of shouts in the dark, and Smith’s…
JAZZ When clarinettist Tony Scott spent some time in Edinburgh one summer in the late 80s, his role as an important contributor to the emergence of both bebop and an early proto-version of free jazz in New York had all but been forgotten. His…
AIRY POP Some may remember Donaghy as the one who quit the Sugababes, burnt her bridges, then suffered a flop album. Fear not, she’s back with So You Say, which has taken radio friendly pop and added a pinch of sophistication. Her vocals are…
ROCK With their last two albums Wilco rewrote the book on what rock bands could do, so where next? The answer is they’ve reined in the experimentalism a tad and are indulging in exquisitely crafted, plaintive country-soul which manages to be…
ELECTRONIC ROCK The hassle with being pioneers - which this Swiss trio are, having invented the kind of theatrical but mechanical electro rock parents and families that are just taken for granted nowadays - is that you rarely get the credit you…
FOLK Ever since she won the prestigious New Horizon award for 2006 at the BBC Folk Awards, Julie Fowlis has been landed with the unenviable expectation that she might succeed in taking Gaelic singing to a wider audience than it currently reaches…
INDIE Rarely can a band have managed to sum themselves up so well just within their own name. Glasgow’s Twilight Sad are, let’s not beat about the bush, a band who make sad music - yet it’s that particular Scottish sadness which finds itself couched…
INDIE You won’t read about them in hype-hungry magazines or find them bombarding Myspace profiles with friend requests, and as a result Butcher Boy may well be one of the most exciting discoveries you’ll make this year. This debut album from the…
ROCK You know what you’re getting when it comes to BRMC. Straight ahead, no frills rock’n’roll delivered with a degree of calculated nonchalance. Loops, samples or a ten-minute long jazz jam are not concepts these guys are familiar with. But…
INDIE ELECTRONICA This first-time collaboration between The Fall’s mouthy frontman, Mark E Smith and German electronic maestros, Mouse on Mars sounds like the imaginary soundtrack to an after-party for the 1990s. Andi Toma and Jan St Werner do a good…
HOUSE Apparently a reference to an old Dutch proverb rather than Pete Doherty’s breakfast, Kraak and Smaak serve up a double remix CD of jazzy house vibes and percussive, break-beat rhythms. Groove-led basslines are reminiscent of the US West Coast…
INDIE After years of ferreting away with his former band, John McKeown’s brilliantly quirky songwriting is finally getting the recognition it deserves. Of course Cookies is an altogether different offering from anything The Yummy Fur ever released…
ERM . . . BJORK? Heralding an album as ‘the most commercial thing Björk has ever done’ is really a bit like declaring the new David Lynch movie ‘his most coherent narrative ever’. For the last decade she has been making the most unashamedly artful…
ROCK Those who have been hanging about the venues of Edinburgh for a few years now might know this lot as ‘the band formerly known as Desc and Khaya’. Every vague shift in musical direction from long-time collaborators Dan Mutch, Pete Harvey and Alun…
CONTEMPORARY JAZZ The Edinburgh-based label is doing its fair share to support contemporary Scottish composition. The Edinburgh Quartet’s fine recent disc of new Scottish string quartets, The Cold Dancer, is followed by this solo outing from the BBC…
JAZZ Scottish singer Alison Burns concentrates on a programme of familiar standards for her debut album, including pleasing versions of ‘You’d Be So Nice To Come Home To’, ‘But Not For Me’, ‘Shadow of Your Smile’ and ‘The Way You Look Tonight’, as…
FOLK ROCK Is there anything Conor Oberst can’t do? Side-projects and record label exec duties aside, this is the talented troubadour’s seventh studio album, under the guise of Bright Eyes, released at the tender age of 27. It’s an utterly lovely…
TWEE Lord, deliver us from hen-toed girls wearing glittering plastic jewelry and wielding Bontempi’s. Have they gone yet? No - Coco Rosie return with another archly twee album entitled The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn, a record that…
JAZZ Pianist and keyboard player Tom Cawley is joined by Sam Burgess on bass and Joshua Blackmore on drums in an exemplary exhibition of contemporary piano trio that sounds a lot fresher and more imaginative than EST on their recent Glasgow outing.
ACOUSTIC POP For all its wild weather and curious inhabitants, you probably couldn’t help but make resplendently weird music if you grew up strumming a guitar on Orkney. Half Cousin’s 2004 album The Function Room provided some proof of that; main man…
INDIE It may be a cliché, but second albums are tricky. Deviate too far from the sound that took you to the big time and ‘you’ve lost your touch’. Conversely, plough on down the same furrow and ‘you’ve run out of ideas’. And it’s in the latter camp…
DISCO PUNK Art School inebriates Shitdisco have been the life, soul and soundtrack of parties everywhere from Glasgow to Bangok in the last year. How well their turbo-charged disco punk would transfer to record was always in question, though, and…
COUNTRY ROCK Is there any band that says summer more than The Bees? I don’t know what they put in the water on the Isle of Wight, but this is one of the most breezy records you’re likely to hear. It should be given out at the gates of every summer…
ELECTRONICA This double-pack of some of The Black Dog’s most seminal work will have veteran techno-heads the world over salivating with anticipation, or in some cases, cursing. Vinyl pressings of most of these recordings have been changing hands…
HAUNTED ACOUSTIC There’s a terminally bleak air to Dundee painter and musician Fraser Stewart’s quiet-time aside from Alamos and Perineum metal outlets. With a penchant for tuneless whistling and testing, syntax-free deep vocals, Fritz undermines the…
FOLK Fiddler Duncan Chisholm sees Wolfstone as a Highland rock band who happen to play fiddles and pipes, and the musical mix here bears out that emphasis. This new set on their own Once Bitten label (if you see that name as reflecting earlier harsh…
PUB ROCK Despite having a guitar-playing singer called Bob Mould, this Shotts-based five-piece are sadly not imbued with the spirits of American hardcore more’s the pity. What they are instead is a tediously ordinary pub rock outfit with precious few…
Brett Anderson Brett Anderson (Drowned in Sound) Debut solo venture from the former Suede daddy has glints of his former glories but is, well, like Suede without the fun, glam bits, so fairly hard work for the most part.
SCARY NASTINESS Far from sitting on the fence TAWFAWW choose to unceremoniously hack down the fence, stamp it into little pieces, collect it up and feed it to a pack of hungry dogs. Well, that’s what it sounds like. To be honest this sounds like…
FOLK Considering the recent leaps forward in folk music made by the likes of Karine Polwart and Seth Lakeman, it simply isn’t enough these days to be a proficient traditional band with a few decent tunes. Scottish fivesome The Midden suffer by such…
COUNTRY POP Given that The Primary 5 are the band of ex-Teenage Fanclub drummer Paul Quinn, it’s not surprising to find they’re in a decent amount of hock to The Byrds. Go! or Pure Pop For Now People to give the record it’s full, swingin’ title is a…
ROCK (Rough Trade) A million albums later, Arcade Fire show up dazed, dusty, but acutely aware that their magic is currently more potent than almost any band on the planet, and this, their second album, is what will propel them to global…
ELECTRONICA (Benbecula) Christ.’s real skill is in his lightness of touch. Deft strokes, swathes, echoes, and pulses give this, his second long playing offering, a playful warmth which of late has been driven from so much electronic music in…
POST ROCK (Hydra Head) Not everyone gets to be centre stage, and it takes people like Justin K Broadrick, methodically exploring their own themes, ideas and textures on the fringes so that the likes of Razorlight have room under the spotlight to…
INDIE (Full Time Hobby) Ex-Arab Strapper Malcolm Middleton posted his intent with the glorious 2005 album Into the Woods, and this remarkable follow-up cements his place as one of the best songwriters in the country. There is an anthemic pop…
POP ROCK (Hypertension) Wearing your heart on your sleeve has always sounded like a painful and messy sacrifice to me, while displaying your musical influences like a big clanging medal round the neck is nothing short of a grave mistake. So…
POST ROCK (Bella Union) Girls’n’stuff bothereth not Texas post-rock rangers Explosions in the Sky. On their fourth long player, they have infinitely more important thematic fish to fry. Take opener, ‘The Birth and Death of the Day’ for instance…
HOUSE (Gung Ho!) Starting out life as a sprawling 12-strong Icelandic art/film/music collective in 1995, GusGus have mutated over the years. At their heart has always remained a soulful electronic throb wrapped in alternately soothing and wanton…
FOLK (Reveal Records) Folk music is not the usual field of activity for this label, but they were so impressed with singer and guitarist Kris Drever playing live that they snapped him up to record this debut album. It has been eagerly anticipated…
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